Thread: Question on letter carving

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For those of you who use the hot glue gun technique on your tombstones...do you have an easy way of transferring letters onto the foam to trace over with the glue gun? I want to try this technique on my Dead Ringer tombstone, as my epitaph poem is rather long but I don't want to go through some long, convoluted process to get the letters on there if people here have an easy way to do this.

Thanks for any suggestions!

I don't do the gluegun carving, but using a woodburner, I actually use either a tiny bit of spray mount glue, or else pin/tape the paper down and burn through it. I'm not sure how well this would work with a gluegun method, tho.

The spray mount glue is this stuff: 3M Spray Mount Artist's Adhesive - BLICK art materials

The nice thing about it is that with a light application (spray the paper, not the stone), the paper stays put, but you can pull it up and smooth it back down easily if you're playing with arrangement. This method worked for the woodburner and for when I used an Xacto knife to cut the lettering too. Saves a ton of time trying to trace/transfer lettering.

I've only had one instance where the spray mount "burned" the foam when I didn't wait a few minutes for it to dry - and it was so slight that it wasn't obvious at all after painting.

Unfortunately here in most of Southern California we don't get the blue foam stuff, to hot here, we get the styrofoam stuff so I use an exacto knife which gives it a chiselled look. I tape the pattern on and cut it out. It works pretty good.

If you have a dremel tool those work rather well.

You can also use a cheap soldering gun by using a piece of #12 or #14 copper wire as a tip. You can shape the tip to make it rounded or into a sharp "V" or make a few tips as needed. I have a few shapes I use like a "rounding over" shape for tombstone work or a "mortar joint" for walls... I just grab an old paper stencil and a sharpie to get the letters/numbers outlined and neat, then cut into it with the gun.

So far i have gone the dremel route and i use a hot wire. I do want to get the wood burning tool and a soldering iron though also. I watched a tombstone workshop at midwest haunters convention, and they used hot wires,wood burners and soldering irons for the work.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've used the dremel method before, I just wanted to try something different, but if there is no really good way to get clean lettering on the foam for using the glue gun method I may hold off until I get to a tombstone that I don't care about looking as nice and just freehand it.

Just a suggestion, not sure how easy it would be to get hold of, and not sure how it would work but you could try using carbon paper.

Carbon paper is the film that used to be placed in between letter headed paper and copy paper to get a typed copy (hence the name carbon copy)

I have used this to transfer pictures and patterns, but have not tried it on foam ... yet.

just an idea ...

Hmm...I know my parents had a bunch stashed in their basement...that belonged to my grandparents and their typewriter...Not sure if they still have it. I'll have to check office stores to see if that stuff even easily exists anymore...good idea, though!

I use diluted elmers glue and just glue the paper to the tombstone and then use my dremel should work with a wood burning tool